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Event Description:English Professor Meoghan Cronin discusses the influence of religion on the maturation of the good girl in nineteenth-century fiction.

Looking at several works, in particular novels by Anne Brontë, Elizabeth Sewell, and Mary Ward (authors from very different religious backgrounds), readers can see the unresolvable conflicts that arise when religious ideals of goodness conflict with family duties or girls’ desires and independent moral decisions.

The versions of goodness represented by the father, the church, and the social culture offer a diffuse, fractured set of directives, and the good girl cannot fulfill all the codes at once. As a result, she must choose to sacrifice her reputation, sacrifice her standing in her family, sacrifice her faith, or sacrifice her life. With any of these choices, the good girl will be accounted for—one way or another—as not good enough.

This event is free, and open to the public.This event is open to the Saint Anselm College community only.This is a student-only event.This event is open to students 21+ ONLY.Other [Provide details below]